Hey, this is probably a kind of unusual question, but bear with me. I have a 6ish year-old Athlon Thunderbird desktop which seems to be in the process of dying(?). When I turn it on, it makes a low-ish pitched grinding/grumbling noise until maybe 5 or so minutes after it was powered up (it used to be even noisier before I replaced the power supply 1/2 year ago). I think the noise must be from a fan about to die (tho probably not the power supply), or maybe the HD. Anyways, along with this noise there is a smell, kind of difficult to describe, but it's somewhat "sweet", maybe a little ozone-ish. I wouldn't describe it as bitter or acrid. Any ideas what this smell might be? And my main concern: is it potentially toxic fumes that I shouldn't be breathing? I.e., could it be burning/melting solder with lead in the fumes, etc.? Thanks, AbeAbe
Besides dust, you might try to narrow down where the sound is coming from. I suspect it's a fan, and while I don't know how many you have, you can narrow it down by unplugging a fan at a time to narrow things down. I'd probably avoid stopping the CPU fan, however. If it were solder melting, then the system would be an inferno. As already pointed out, it's probably just dust, especially if your system is still booting up fine. The smell *might* be the fan, but the smell you're describing doesn't jive with the wonderful smell of burning electronics...because, I can tell you from killing a few Athlons in the past, the smell is not sweet at all.
